The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1912. REAL LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 152, 14 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1912. REAL LIFE.

If one reads the daily papers, studies the political speeches of part - leaders, scans the foreign telegrams, skims the programmes of social reformers, one is ajt, ever; now and then, to find oneself confronted with an awkward question: What is it all about? Politics are, after all, nothing but the making of arrangements for men to live at peace with each other. People get in the way of talking of the State as if it were something above and separate from the nation. But the Stale is, after all, the nation, and Parliament is but the nation making its own rules and arrangements. Men are apt to get so immersed in politics that they begin to think administration an end in itself. They base their political need not on a programme or a principle, but on an outspoken hatred of their adversaries. Yet it remains true that the best governed country is the least governed country. What, then, wc may ask ourselves, is the real life that we are aiming at, which our political institutions exist to secure? This question the Rev. A. C. Benson sets himself the task of answering in a recent issue of Public Opinion. The object of any community is, and must be, he says, to prevent waste, to see that no one is unnecessarily rich, and that no one i» unduly poor; to reward merit by comfort; to induce men to be disinterested, public-spirited, inventive; to give equal chances to all; to diminish crime and vice, and, most of all, to increase happiness. That is what we are aiming at, or ought to be. What, then, is the ideal life for the citizen of a community? Rev. Benson says that he ought to- be healthy, neighborly, good-humored, upright, self-restrained, orderly. He ought to have a definite piece of work to do, in order to support himself, and to support also those members of the community, the children, the invalided, the frail, the aged, who cannot do any work. These will always have to be supported, so that all toilers will be obliged to do more work than is actually needed for their own support. But toil ought never to fall into mere and hopeless drudgery. Everyone ought to have leisure and to be able to use it. Work ought to be enjoyable and enjoyed; and, besides that, there ought to be an enjoyment of beautiful and leisurely things. That is a simple programme, and yet how far are we from realising it! What are the

chief obstacles in the way of such life? First of all, disease, mental deficiency, taints of every kind. We are more and more discovering that crime and vice are often only symptoms of mental unsoundness, and that the one hope is the elimination of these inheritances. Then pride, combativeness, ostentation, selfish' disregard of others, the greedy grasping, at things we cannot use, all tend to make people eager to claim and to possess, and unwilling to share happiness. It has been tiuly said that the nineteenth century is pre-eminent for being the century in which more useless things were produced than have ever been produced in the history of the world. The only cure for this is a real love of simplicity. While we desire for the sake of ostentation to have rooms we do not use, furniture which has no purpose, ornaments which cumber and do not adorn, so long will workers be set to make these things, and taken away from the work of producing useful things. It would seem, then, that all ostentatious luxury is another obstacle to just freedom and participation. Mr. Benson believes that these ideas are really dawning upon people. He takes one or two obvious signs of our progress in reasonable and humane directions, namely, the diminution of cruelty, the recognition that the sick have a right to be nursed, the marvellous orderliness of the whole nation compared to what it was a hundred years ago, there are all signs that we appreciate the rights of others, and desire peace and goodwill to prevail. Incalculable benefits have resulted from education. People will always disagree to a certain extent, and minorities will have to submit; but we are learning more and more to consult the interests of all alike, and learning that the only • real liberty is the freedom which does : not interfere with the freedom of others. This, then, is the real life which we must keep in view, the life which insists on work as a duty and yet allows a real margin of leisure; the cultivation of a taste for all beautiful and interesting things, the recognition of the right of all children to be born free from inherited taint. It is on such principles as these that civil and social virtue are based; for such virtue is essentially the perception that duty does not merely consist in keeping oneself strong and self-res trained and comfortable, but is bound up with the welfare of all citizens as well. The plain duty, then, of the man who desires to help on the life of 'his time is to have an ideal that is both simple and disinterested; he must not : claim too large a share of comfort, and ha must,'above all things, desire to im-

part as well as to participate. That is the true Socialism, the constructive Socialism not based on confiscation but on participation. The tendency to isolate oneself, to feel superior, to be very conscious of one's rights, to wish to avoid one's duties—that is the individualism with which no terms must be made. It and he rejoices with all his heart to think that it is not a mere value ideal, is on these lines the Rev. Benson believes the now Democracy is shaping itself; but a belief which is amply justified by the .signs of the times.